Lot
31

Property from the Collection of Ralph and Mary Booth

Ralph and Mary Booth formed an outstanding collection of Impressionist, Modern and Old Master paintings in the 1920s. Not only did they build an impressive collection of their own, including works by Renoir and Degas, they also enthusiastically provided funds for the purchase of masterpieces from Bellini to Cézanne for major American museums. The principal beneficiaries of the family's generosity, both from acquisitions and bequests, were the Detroit Institute of the Arts and the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

Publisher of the Chicago Journal and the Detroit Tribune and later the Booth Newspaper chain of dailies in Michigan, Ralph Booth was devoted to the creation of a great museum in Detroit, and he provided a continuity of leadership foor the private and the public institution he served for a total of twenty-seven years. First as a member of the museum corporation and trustee from 1914 to 1917 and then as President from 1917, Ralph Booth was a forward thinking collector who was well acquainted with the art and museums of Europe.

As President of the Arts Commission of the City of Detroit, Booth made important and prescient purchases for the museum, including Van Gogh's Autoportrait of 1877, purchased in 1922, only thirty-two years after the artist's death and at a time when his work was not widely appreciated in the United States. Purchased simultaneously was Matisse's La Fenêtre of 1916, a daringly contemporary work by the standards of 1922, this acquisition suggests considerable vision and foresight on the part of Mr. Booth. These two paintings were the first by these artists ever to enter American public collections.

The heirs of Ralph H. Booth have continued this tradition of patronage by donating Gauguin's masterpiece, The Invocation, 1903, to the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. The family rarely offers works for sale and Christie's was honored to assist with the sale of Picasso's 1901 oil painting, Les Tuileries, sold for $23,800,000 in 1990. We are once again delighted to be offering another work from the Booth Collection, Monet's Vase de chrysanthèmes, which was purchased by the Booths in 1939. Vase de chrysanthèmes has descended through the family to the present day and now, 70 years later, is being offered at auction for the first time.

New York, French Art Galleries, French Impressionists, November-December 1939.

Lot Essay

Depicting a brightly colored bouquet of chrysanthemums in a blown glass vase, the present canvas is one of some twenty floral still-lifes that Monet painted between 1878 and 1882. Wildenstein has suggested that it may be the painting of flowers that Monet mentioned in two letters to the dealer Durand-Ruel written from his home at Poissy in November of 1882 (Letters 301 and 302). Although Monet turned to still-life only intermittently during his long career, his achievement in the genre has been widely recognized. John House has written, "Monet's explorations of this subject include some of the most lavish still-lifes produced by the Impressionist group, and some of the most radical challenges to a long-standing still-life tradition" (Monet: Nature into Art, New Haven, 1986, p. 43). An avid gardener throughout his life, Monet was particularly drawn to floral compositions. Indeed, he once declared, "I perhaps owe it to flowers for having become a painter" (quoted in P. Tucker, Claude Monet: Life and Art, New Haven, 1995, p. 178). Robert Gordon and Andrew Forge have commented, "It is particularly in Monet's still-lifes that we recognize what it was that Van Gogh learned from him: not simply the powerful and expressive palette but also a quality of impassioned drawing that is much more apparent in the flower paintings--forms painted at the range of stereoscopic vision, therefore more tactile--than in most of his landscapes. In these sumptuous flower paintings, the drawing and color are carried along together with tremendous impetus. His love for flowers is unmistakable. The character, the quality of growth, the specific rhythm of each bouquet is given its due" (ibid., pp. 214-215).

The still-lifes that Monet produced between 1878 and 1882, while he was living first at Vétheuil and then at Poissy, represent the artist's most sustained exploration of the genre in his entire career. He had experimented with still-life on several occasions during the 1860s, but abandoned it during the years that he spent at Argenteuil (1872-1878), concentrating instead on landscape. He returned to still-life in earnest following his move to Vétheuil, spurred at least in part by commercial interests. The years at Vétheuil and Poissy were marked by great financial hardship for the artist, and his still-life paintings, particularly the floral compositions, were readily salable and yielded higher prices during this period than his landscapes. Several of the still-lifes sold for five hundred francs each, while at least two netted Monet as much as seven hundred, more than the yearly rent on his house at Vétheuil. Charles Stuckey has declared, "Financially speaking, landscape painter Monet was saved by his work in still-life" (Monet at Vétheuil: The Turning Point, exh. cat., University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, 1998, p. 56). Following his move from Poissy to Giverny in 1883, Monet's interest in still-life again waned. His only major efforts in the genre after this were a set of thirty-six canvases commissioned by Durand-Ruel in 1882-1885 to decorate the six double doors of his drawing-room (Wildenstein, nos. 919-954) and a group of four large paintings of chrysanthemums dated 1896-1897 (Wildenstein, nos. 1495-1498). Monet continued to take inspiration from flowers throughout his career, however. One of his first concerns upon settling into his new home at Giverny was to get the gardens in order, and the water-lily pond that he built there became his principal subject for painting during the final two decades of his life.

Although commercial concerns played an important role in Monet's renewed interest in still-life at Vétheuil and Poissy, they were not the sole impetus. Monet included a comparatively large number of still-lifes in exhibitions in the early 1880s, indicating a desire to bring his aesthetic achievement in the genre to the attention of critics and the public. Although some of his still-lifes from 1878-1882 are fairly traditional, with restrained brushwork and artfully arranged compositions, other examples, including the present canvas, are more innovative. Abundant bouquets of flowers are arranged in bold patterns that give a pretext for virtuoso displays of colored brushwork, creating a rich weave of color and texture that virtually fills the canvas. House has written, "Monet's still-lifes of around 1880... systematically undermined the conventions of the then-dominant Chardin tradition. Within that tradition, the objects in still-lifes were presented in clear, orderly groupings, and firmly grounded on the surfaces on which they stood. Monet played down the physicality of the objects in favor of emphasizing their optical effect, with the informality of their grouping suggesting that this effect has been rapidly perceived, rather than carefully ordered. The pictures themselves, of course, are as elaborately contrived and organized as their predecessors; it was by his calculating rejection of the tradition that Monet sought to give them their sense of immediacy" (op. cit., p. 42).

Monet seems to have had a particular predilection for chrysanthemums, the subject of the present painting. Chrysanthemums, which had originally been imported from China in the eighteenth century, were still associated with East Asia in Monet's day, and the artist owned at least one Japanese print (from Hokusai's series of Large Flowers) that depicted the blossoms. Following a visit to Giverny, Gustave Geffroy explicitly mentioned the presence of chrysanthemums in Monet's garden there: "As soon as you push the little entrance gate, you think, in almost all seasons, that you are entering a paradise. It is the colorful and fragrant kingdom of flowers. Each month is adorned with its flowers, from the lilacs and irises to the chrysanthemums and nasturtiums" (quoted in P. Tucker, op. cit., p. 206). Monet's corpus of still-lifes from Vétheuil and Poissy includes four additional paintings of chrysanthemums, each depicting a single, profuse bunch of flowers in an ornate bowl or vase (Wildenstein, nos. 492, 492a, 634, 635; Musée d'Orsay, Paris, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and Private collections; fig. 1). He also featured chrysanthemums in three of the panels that he painted to decorate Durand-Ruel's dining room (Wildenstein, nos. 925, 927, 947; fig. 2), and he depicted two bouquets of the bushy blossoms in one of his rare still-lifes from the late 1880s (Wildenstein, no. 1212; Private Collection). Most notably, he chose chrysanthemums for his last significant effort in still-life, a group of four paintings from 1896-1897 in which the canvas is covered entirely by a vibrant, virtuoso display of flowers and foliage that anticipates the "all-over" composition of his celebrated late water-lily paintings (Wildenstein, nos. 1495-1498; fig. 3).

Another Impressionist artist with a well-documented love of chrysanthemums was Gustave Caillebotte. Monet and Caillebotte were close friends and fellow gardeners, and Monet often sought Caillebotte's advice about horticulture, including information on purveyors of chrysanthemums. Monet also spoke of his admiration for Caillebotte's art: "In still-life, he has achieved pieces which are worthy of Manet's and Renoir's greatest successes" (quoted in J. House, op. cit., p. 43). Around 1882, Caillebotte acquired one of Monet's chrysanthemum compositions from Vétheuil (Wildenstein, no. 635), and he began to paint his own floral still-lifes shortly thereafter. In 1893, the year before his death, Caillebotte made six paintings of chrysanthemums (Berhaut, nos. 484-489; fig. 4). Three of these depict the blossoms arranged in vases, following the example of Monet's still-lifes from Vétheuil and Poissy; the remaining three show the entire canvas filled with flowers in a way that anticipates Monet's late Chrysanthème compositions. Caillebotte gave one of the latter paintings to Monet as a gift, an eloquent expression of his admiration for his friend (Wildenstein, no. 484; fig. 4). In 1896-1897, Caillebotte is likely to have been on Monet's mind due to the controversy surrounding his bequest to the French state of sixty-seven Impressionist paintings, including sixteen by Monet. House has suggested that Monet's four paintings of chrysanthemums from these years may indeed have been intended as a tribute to the artist's recently deceased friend (ibid., p. 43).

Other information

Pre-Lot Text

Property from the Collection of Ralph and Mary Booth

Ralph and Mary Booth formed an outstanding collection of Impressionist, Modern and Old Master paintings in the 1920s. Not only did they build an impressive collection of their own, including works by Renoir and Degas, they also enthusiastically provided funds for the purchase of masterpieces from Bellini to Cézanne for major American museums. The principal beneficiaries of the family's generosity, both from acquisitions and bequests, were the Detroit Institute of the Arts and the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

Publisher of the Chicago Journal and the Detroit Tribune and later the Booth Newspaper chain of dailies in Michigan, Ralph Booth was devoted to the creation of a great museum in Detroit, and he provided a continuity of leadership foor the private and the public institution he served for a total of twenty-seven years. First as a member of the museum corporation and trustee from 1914 to 1917 and then as President from 1917, Ralph Booth was a forward thinking collector who was well acquainted with the art and museums of Europe.

As President of the Arts Commission of the City of Detroit, Booth made important and prescient purchases for the museum, including Van Gogh's Autoportrait of 1877, purchased in 1922, only thirty-two years after the artist's death and at a time when his work was not widely appreciated in the United States. Purchased simultaneously was Matisse's La Fenêtre of 1916, a daringly contemporary work by the standards of 1922, this acquisition suggests considerable vision and foresight on the part of Mr. Booth. These two paintings were the first by these artists ever to enter American public collections.

The heirs of Ralph H. Booth have continued this tradition of patronage by donating Gauguin's masterpiece, The Invocation, 1903, to the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. The family rarely offers works for sale and Christie's was honored to assist with the sale of Picasso's 1901 oil painting, Les Tuileries, sold for $23,800,000 in 1990. We are once again delighted to be offering another work from the Booth Collection, Monet's Vase de chrysanthèmes, which was purchased by the Booths in 1939. Vase de chrysanthèmes has descended through the family to the present day and now, 70 years later, is being offered at auction for the first time.